How to play Mork Borg. Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Mork Borg. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Mork Borg game. I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections. Game category Combat rules Zero hit points Abilities Magic Omens Building an example character How to level up Game category. Mork Borg describes itself as a doom metal album of a game. A spiked flail to the face. Rules light, heavy everything else. It’s set in a world driven insane by accurate prophecies foretelling the end of days. You’ll face goblins, trolls, and blood drenched skeletons. How will you react to the certain impending death of the world? By robbing graves for soil-stained wealth, or facing down the apocalypse, hoping it can be fought? You can play as character classes, such as the esoteric hermit, occult herbmaster, or gutterborn scum. Your character might be a nihilist, someone who stutters when lying, an inveterate bug eater, or maybe you’ll tap into the magic all around you and call down some arcane calamities of your own. This is Mork Borg. A tabletop roleplaying game famous for its artistic rule book. Bright yellow, darkest black, blood red. I encourage you all to check out the rule book even if only from an art perspective. You’ve got nothing to lose because if you don’t like the art style, the creators offer a free bare bones edition that has all unusual layouts removed. It’s just black font on a white background. But that would be a bit sad. I first heard about Mork Borg from a conversation about which tabletop roleplaying game had the most beautiful rule book. Mork Borg and the spinoffs it has inspired are really something special. So if you haven’t browsed this rule book, give it a try. Maybe hearing this explanation of the rules will help smooth your experience. I dunno, let’s get into it. Combat rules in Mork Borg. All the dice rolls in Mork Borg are made by the players. That includes combat turn order, players attacking an enemy, and when players are defending against being attacked. Everything. The game master doesn’t ever have to roll dice. The word initiative means turn order during combat. A player rolls a six sided dice, also called a d6, for initiative. A one, two, or three means the enemies attack first. A four, five, or six means the players attack first. If there are multiple players, they all roll a d6 and add their agility modifiers. Higher rolls can act first. Attacking an enemy goes like this. First, roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. Next, if you’re attacking with a melee weapon add your strength modifier to your roll. If you’re attacking with a ranged weapon, add your presence ability modifier to your roll. If the result is 12 or higher, you hit. Roll your weapon's damage dice, something like a d4, d6, etc. Lastly, if the enemy has armor, roll for the armor, which will be a d2, a d4, or a d6, and subtract the armor roll from the damage. Defending when an enemy is trying to hit you goes like this. First, roll a d20. Next, add your agility modifier. If the result is 12 or higher, they missed you. If the result is 11 or lower, they hit you. Roll for their damage (a d4, a d6, etc). If you have armor, roll for your armor (a d2, a d4, or a d6) and subtract the armor roll from the incoming damage. Rolling a twenty or a one on the d20 when attacking or defending are special. A twenty on the to-hit dice is a critical hit. A critical when attacking means you deal twice as much damage and the enemy’s armor or protection is lowered by a tier. A critical when defending means you get a free attack of opportunity. The opposite of a natural twenty critical success is a natural one critical failure, a fumble. Fumbling when attacking means your weapon breaks or is lost. Fumbling when defending means you take twice as much damage, and your armor is reduced one tier. Enemies don’t fight forever in Mork Borg. If they’re at one third of their hit points, or if their leader gets killed, or half the group is eliminated, the Game Master will prompt a player to roll two d6. If the number is greater than the morale number of the enemy, they surrender or flee. Those were the combat rules. Here is an example round of combat. There’s a prowler out, a lawless good for nothing crook banished from civilization. Low on resources, allies, and basic decency, the prowler seeks retribution, and coin. This particular one is a liar who enjoys stealing one single item from people to mess with them mentally, and they love getting the credit for other peoples’ exploits. All of those personality traits come from random tables ...
